


Knock Me Off Balance

by LadyKnightOfHollyrose



Series: The Onlly Cat Who Knows Where It's At [1]
Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: F/M, Friendship, Gen, Identity Reveal, Introspection, Marinette's guns, Partial Identity Reveal, Secret Identity, post season one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-24
Updated: 2016-04-24
Packaged: 2018-06-04 06:14:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6644590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyKnightOfHollyrose/pseuds/LadyKnightOfHollyrose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Alix had managed to crash into his side, having careened off course to avoid Chloé and Sabrina’s sudden appearance, Adrien had anticipated falling face first and kissing the pavement; of maybe scratching up his cheek or scraping up his arms in a way that’d have Nathalie tutting and his father considering pulling his son out of school entirely.</p><p>Instead, he’s being propped up by a pair of small, steady hands holding him in what would probably be a dip if he’d been facing the other direction.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Knock Me Off Balance

**Author's Note:**

> References to Origins and the later episodes of season one, but nothing overly spoilery.

Some days, Adrien can’t help but wonder how he’s managed to fool the world into believing that the perfectly poised, graceful model Adrien Agreste plastered across the city is his default setting; his _natural_ state of being.

When he’s feeling particularly reflective – usually in the car between shoots, or when he’s sat as still as possible while a make-up artist goes to town on his face – he supposes that it could have something to do with the way his miraculously bad luck tends to manifest in more… elaborate ways when he’s himself. As opposed to the more predictable slips and spills Chat seems to take on a regular basis.

No one would make the same mistake when referring to Chat Noir, after all.

It’s almost a little funny how Ladybug (…and Marinette, he’s found more recently) gets so offended on Chat’s behalf at the slightest mention of Chat and his luck being a hindrance. They’re thoughts that he’s entertained himself on occasion, wondering whether his lady may have fared better against the akuma of the day without Chat getting underfoot or being physically thrown into her; wondering whether the fact that he kept being turned against her made him more of a _liability_ than a help.

The incident with Princess Fragrance and how close he’d been to cataclysming his lady again still weighs on his mind.

He tries not to let the thought linger too long when it creeps from the recesses of his mind, and the fire he recalls in Ladybug’s eyes when reporters make the mistake of presenting the notion to her and her infuriation at the very idea tends to chase away the most persistent of his doubts.

He’d been surprised to hear a similar amount of ire in Marinette’s voice at Chloé’s loud complaints earlier that week that Chat had totally slowed down her rescue and how much faster Ladybug could have gotten the job done without him skulking around.

Fists clenched tight by her sides and chin set in steely determination, Marinette’s righteous fury had rained down in a blistering torrent of words that had Adrien _so_ glad that they’d managed to clear up the gum misunderstanding before it could _really_ brew.

(She even seems to be warming up to him more recently, her conversations with Adrien graduating from the initial monosyllabic stutters to fully coherent sentences about more than just their schoolwork. Marinette’s been nothing but kind since the whole debacle, if a little stiff with him, but he’s holding on to the hope that recent developments mean that the reservations that had kept her so skittish have been lain to rest.)

Speaking of.

After Alix had managed to crash into his side, having careened off course to avoid Chloé and Sabrina’s sudden appearance, Adrien had anticipated falling face first and kissing the pavement; of maybe scratching up his cheek or scraping up his arms in a way that’d have Nathalie tutting and his father considering pulling his son out of school entirely. (Adrien hopes that this is just his mind being a little melodramatic instead of it being a very real possibility, but then again past experience hasn’t exactly shown Gabriel Agreste as someone who’d accept the reasoning of bumps and bruises in play just being a part of growing up.)

But as he blinks out of his own internal monologue, he finds himself to be mostly upright and no more injured than he’d been to begin with.

Instead, he’s being propped up by a pair of small, steady hands holding him in what would probably be a dip if he’d been facing the other direction.

Turning his head, he follows those hands up forearms that are taut but in no way straining; up and up until he’s staring up at pink lips puckered in a moue of surprise and into wide eyes the colour of summer skies.

Marinette braces his weight with surprising ease, a slight flush rising high on her cheeks; more likely out of embarrassment than exertion.

She sets him right hastily, her hands reaching up to flutter by his arms and over the tops of his shoulders for a moment as she physically pushes any lingering awkwardness aside in the face of her concern.

“Really, Marinette,” he says, “thanks to your save I’m absolutely fine.”

She holds his gaze for one long moment, searching his face for something. Then she steps away and out of his bubble with a small nod.

There’s something about the careful way that she’d studied his expression that is _so familiar_ to him, and it has the hairs on the nape of his neck prickling at the rare instance of eye contact; rare because it’s usually hastily broken off by a bashful Marinette. But something in it tugs at his memory.

He’s brought abruptly from his musings at a loud whoop from behind him.

“Marinette’s _ripped_ ,” Kim is crowing, drawing close enough to sling an arm around Marinette’s shoulder to poke her arm through the light cotton of her shirt. “C’mon, what’s the secret behind those guns?”

Marinette _grins_ , flexing her free arm in the same way Chat had the first time he’d met her while suited up, and she has the same amused glint in her eye as she’d had back then as she’d teasingly swooned over the superhero.

“I guess it just comes with being raised in a bakery,” she quips, and Adrien has to fight the instinct to squint at her because _holy shit_ _was that a bread pun?_ “We’re always having sacks of flour delivered, and it’s not like they put themselves away.” She shrugs Kim’s arm off her and pokes _him_ lightly in the side in retaliation. “You should come over for the morning delivery at 5am if you _really_ want to test your mettle. Rise to the occasion and take on my Papa.”

Nose scrunching slightly as he tries to determine whether she’s really just punned _twice in a row_ Adrien hears Alix scoffing at the posturing this has prompted from Kim. But still, there’s an idea – if the small glimpse of life with the Dupain-Cheng’s that he’d caught when he’d been over to prepare for the Ultimate Mega Strike tournament was what a morning with Marinette’s family is like, then he’s willing to bet that the monstrously early hour would be worth getting up for in exchange.

Certainly when weighed against having to haul himself out of bed at a similar hour to catch the dawn light for a photoshoot, anyway.

And by now Alya has, of course, made her way over to snag her best friend playfully around the middle.

“And where exactly are those reflexes every other day of your life, girl?” Her smirk is impish as she nudges Marinette with an elbow.

Her lips part to answer, but Marinette’s saved the trouble of responding when an ominous boom rings across their spot at the Trocadéro all the way from the Champs de Mars.

It’s enough to have everyone scrambling, Alya shouting a garbled “Gotta go, Ladyblog time!” over her shoulder as she sprints away, leaving an exasperated Marinette leagues behind her squeaking out her friend’s name in the face of what’s surely an akuma striking.

Adrien spares a moment to run a hand through his hair with a rueful smile, one hand already shoved into his messenger bag ready to wrestle Plagg away from the wedge of cheese he’s probably in the middle of demolishing (assuming there’s even any left by this point) if need be and set to make a run for some kind of cover to transform.

That’s when he hears it.

“Well between running after _you_ and keeping up with that silly kitty I doubt there’re even any reflexes _left_ for poor Marinette,” he hears; a mutter so low that it’s only his enhanced hearing that enables him to pick the words out of the chaos around them.

She huffs out a sigh, and then there’s shift in her tone that sends goose bumps up Adrien’s arms.

“C’mon Tikki, let’s go keep her out of trouble.”

Wait, what?

Another boom echoes across the city, closer than before, and it’s enough to jolt Adrien into picking his jaw up off the floor and swinging around to see-

That she’s already disappeared.

Damn.

He spends another moment just staring, unable to process what he’s just heard (after all of that secrecy it seems silly that this is the way he’s found out that his lady has been _right behind him this whole time_ ) but is kept from working himself into a full-scale meltdown by the prickling of sharp, tiny teeth sinking into his palm.

Adrien hisses, hand shooting back out of his bag reflexively with Plagg still attached.

“As hilarious as watching you finally put together the obvious is, don’t you have something else to be doing right now..?”

Adrien blinks.

“…The akuma..?”

Right.

“Plagg, claws out!”

Save Paris first, freak out about accidentally finding out Ladybug’s identity later.

**Author's Note:**

> Ah man this is the first fic I've managed to write in 2016 and for a new fandom too! Though I always figured I'd break into Miraculous Ladybug with MariChat but go figure XD 
> 
> ...I had initially intended for this to be a standalone oneshot, but I feel like there's more to this story. I'll probably continue this as a series of oneshots? We'll see.


End file.
